If it weren’t for The Blind Side, you’d never know or care about Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson or Alcon Entertainment.

In Hollywood, a town full of corporate conglomerates regularly uncorking $150 million movies like Transformers and Thor or fragile independent flicks like Our Idiot Brother, Kosove and Johnson occupy the netherworld in between. They make movies that usually cost under $60 million and deliberately ­appeal to a wide swath of the mega­plex-going public, movies like Dolphin Tale, Something ­Borrowed and The Book of Eli. Movies that, for the most part, your mother would be happy to see. No blockbusters, just a solid balance sheet. Not bad.

But like any good Hollywood story, this one has a twist. In 2008 they bought the rights to The Blind Side, Michael Lewis’ bestseller about a rich white woman who adopts a homeless black kid and sets him on a path to NFL stardom. It was another midlist marvel, with a budget of $34 million and Sandra Bullock in the lead role.

The film turned out to be the ­surprise hit of 2009, earning $310 million. Alcon didn’t have any outside investors, so Kosove and Johnson’s small company kept all of the profits, an estimated $200 million, turning them into the smartest men in the game.

So what are Kosove and Johnson doing with all that cash? Something very out of character. They’re looking for that most elusive of all Hollywood harlots: a franchise. The pair recently bought the sequel rights to the classic sci-fi film Blade Runner and the Patrick Swayze/Keanu Reeves surfer/crime film Point Break. That means embracing bigger budgets and higher marketing costs and, with these two titles, ­angering some middle-aged fans of the originals. “The upside is so transformative to the company that it’s worth ­taking the risk,” says Kosove. “But there’s no magic bullet against risk.”

They should know. Kosove, 42, and Johnson, 44, hit it off while undergrads at Princeton and got into movies in 1991, after Kosove read a New York Times article about Pee Wee Kirkland, a New York City street basketball star who chose the life of a drug dealer over an NBA career. Without ­experience or connections the pair convinced Kirkland to sell them the rights to his story for $3,000 cash.

They had no idea what they were doing. They quit good opportunities (law school for Kosove, Salomon Bros. for Johnson), bought a stack of books and studied up on the economics of the movie industry. Then they got a lesson from the school of hard knocks. A past-his-prime producer, Elliott Kastner (The Long Goodbye), recruited them to help pull together a romantic comedy and share in the upside. When he disappeared they were left with no money, and there was no movie.

Despondent, Kosove and Johnson were preparing to quit the game and get real jobs when they got a call from a lawyer representing FedEx founder Fred Smith. He had invested money in Kastner’s dying project and wanted some answers.

“We were honest about the situation,” says Johnson. “We said this is not how the business should work and this is not how a wealthy individual should be using his money.”

Smith was impressed. He agreed to give them “Gatorade money” to finish the comedy and find a buyer so he could at least write off his investment. Kosove and Johnson asked for one thing in return: They wanted Smith to read a business plan they had in mind. Smith, whose nascent plans for FedEx were once laughed out of a class at Yale, agreed.

The problem with the independent movie business, they explained in their 220-page proposal, was that it was too risky. Taking on the full financial burden in the hope of selling films didn’t make sense. The smart play was to first get a guaranteed distribution deal in place from a studio and only then finance films. They would pay a studio a 15% distribution fee and keep bud­gets and overhead low. For the first three years Kosove and Johnson planned to take salaries of only $48,000 each. Smith was impressed.